The first week of every month shouldn’t feel like a marathon of spreadsheets, late nights, and missing invoices.  Every finance team dreams of a smooth, on-time close, without the pressure, errors, or stress.
The good news? It’s achievable with structure, automation, and the right mindset.
Here are 5 proven ways to take days off your closing deadline and give your team their evenings back. 

Standardize Your Closing Calendar

Create a clear, collaborative, and documented monthly closing checklist and process steps.
A standardized calendar builds organization, clarifies roles, and improves accountability across the team. Each task should have an owner, a deadline, and a clear definition of completion.
Make sure everyone understands where their role fits in the process and how their timing impacts the next step. A well-trained and well-informed team is your best accelerator.

⏩ My Tip #1: Don’t aim for over-quality. Identify what truly needs to be controlled monthly and what can move to a quarterly or annual review. Focus your team’s effort where it really matters.
⏩ My Tip #2: Build a RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) for the close, especially if you manage multiple entities or shared services. Review and adjust it every year. 

Collaborate…Early!

Most closing delays don’t start in Accounting, they start with missing POs, late timesheets, or forgotten receipts. Operations, Supply Chain, and Sales all play a role in the close, even if they don’t realize it.
Also, don’t wait until Day 1 of the new month to start, you can already process some entries so that by closing day, you’re reviewing, not chasing.

 ⏩ My Tip #3: Schedule regular short cross-functional meetings, a quick check-in clears blockers before they hit Accounting.
 ⏩ My Tip #4: Encourage a culture where Finance isn’t seen as the ‘compliance police’ but as a partner helping other teams make smarter, faster decisions. Educate your non-finance colleagues on why their timing matters: how a missing PO, late receipt, or unsubmitted timesheet can delay the entire close. Once they see the impact, collaboration becomes much smoother.  

Automate Routine Entries and Reconciliations

Too many finance teams still spend hours on manual postings, reconciliations, and data transfers, time that could be invested in analysis.
Start by identifying repetitive tasks that can be handled by AI or RPA (Robotic Process Automation tools. Next, connect your systems to ensure data flows across the organization. Add to this some real-time reporting tools like Power BI to access live data and eliminate the need for Excel extracts. 

⏩ My Tip #5: Conduct a closing process audit to identify AI / RPA capabilities: list all manual processes, explosive Excel files, never-ending email exchanges and all bottleneck waiting to be automated.
⏩ My Tip #6: Don’t try to automate everything at once. Start small with one easy task and use that Quick Win to build momentum across the team. 

Measure and Celebrate Improvement

If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Track Days to Close, or percentage of on-time tasks. These simple indicators reveal where delays really happen and help you make progress. 

⏩ My Tip #7: Create a close performance dashboard and share it at your monthly finance meeting. Make progress visible, recognize small wins publicly and celebrate the behaviors that make closing smoother and improve the process.  

Investigate a Closing Platformto Automate your process

Let’s be honest: Excel checklists and email threads can only take you so far. When complexity grows, a dedicated closing management platform brings structure and visibility to the process.
At Penon Partners, we trust the close management platform FloQast to secure the month-end close with: 

• Integrated checklists with automated reminders
• Preparer–Reviewer workflows that add structure and traceability, 
• Automated reconciliations and task tracking across entities 
• Collaboration features so Finance, FP&A, and auditors work from one single source of truth 
• Real-time dashboards giving the CFO instant visibility into progress and risks 
• AI Features for reconciliation and email agents 

 Companies using FloQast typically shorten close 30% faster with  75% more visibility,
It’s not about more tools; it’s about gaining control of your process and changing the way teams collaborate. 

⏩ My Tip #8: Deploy the Closing platform on one entity or one process, as a pilot.  

Conclusion 

Automating the closing and month-end process is achievable and will really help your finance teams. It requires expertise, rigor, and methods to succeed though.
At Penon Partners, we specialize in making the month-end Closing process faster and easier. From Process Audits, check lists, clear RACI, to FloQast implementations, our goal is to help finance leaders close faster and with confidence and peace of mind. 

Ready to transform your close? Contact me at cdevies@penonpartners.com